


bits and pieces and magic from the hand

by quakenbake (raccoontitties)



Category: Marvel (Comics)
Genre: F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 18:17:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1097107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raccoontitties/pseuds/quakenbake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You look awfully happy for someone who just got ditched.”</p><p>That voice. Maria knows before she turns around that the night just went from bad to worse.</p><p>“Agent Romanoff. How lovely to see you here.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	bits and pieces and magic from the hand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladydeathfaerie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladydeathfaerie/gifts).



Maria knows better than this. She’s a grown woman and doesn’t need kindly neighbor ladies to pawn her off on dates with unsuspecting relatives. It can only end badly. She knew this and yet it didn’t stop her from standing dumbstruck while Mrs. Brinowski hurriedly making a date with her niece ( _Oh, Beth is such a sweet girl, she’s visiting from L.A_ ) on a cell phone more high tech than Maria’s before rushing off to bridge club.  

 _Her niece_. That’s really what stopped Maria in her tracks. She’s been living across the hall from self-described poor old widow woman Grace Brinowski for years. The woman is a smooth talker if Maria had ever seen one. Smooth and very fast. Yet Maria managed to dodge dozens of nephews, grandsons, and male cousins with practiced ease. Apparently Mrs. Brinowski finally caught on.

She was tired, that’s why she agreed to this. Not at all because Mrs. Brinowski looked so proud of herself, like she’d solved some impossible riddle. Certainly not because her neighbor was nice enough to water Maria’s plants when she got called up to the helicarrier for weeks at a time cleaning up after the Avengers or heaven help her, the mutants. And certainly not because she hadn’t had a Friday off in months and a date in even longer.

No, Maria was just tired, delirious from exhaustion even.

 

…

 

Half an hour into the date, Maria finds herself delirious from boredom.

Beth is nice enough. Beautiful, ambitious, intelligent, and what Maria will grudgingly admit is her type.

But she’s a political aide attached to the World Security Council and she’s new enough to her position to still have an overwhelming supply of enthusiasm and idealism. Once she discovers Maria works for S.H.I.E.L.D, the conversation kept coming back to which senator said what and how a certain group of ambassadors reacted to minor sanctions that Maria has neither heard nor cares about. In theory, they should have a great deal in common; Maria liaises with the council often. But the last thing she wants to talk about on a date is the political machinations of old senile men who are no more capable of running an organization than the buff but dim bouncer checking IDs.

Politicians are the worst. Especially when she’s not being paid to deal with them.

Maria’s looking for an opening to politely leave -- she’d like to stay in Mrs. Brinowski’s good graces --- when her salvation comes in an unexpected form, the X-Men. A near catastrophe in San Francisco has Beth’s superiors calling her in for an emergency satellite conference. Maria accepts her profuse apologies and just barely manages to bite back a smile.

“You look awfully happy for someone who just got ditched.”

That voice. Maria knows before she turns around that the night just went from bad to worse.

“Agent Romanoff. How _lovely_ to see you here.”

“It’s not really,” Natasha says sliding into the booth opposite her and helping herself to the rest of Maria’s appetizer. “I’m working.’

“On what?” As far as she can tell, Natasha is out on the town. Maria watches her take a sip from the drink she brought with her. Whatever it is; it’s strong. Maria can smell it from across the table. Alcohol can’t explain the way Natasha is looking at her though, taking in the low cut of her dress and the bright red lipstick that's so different form the demure shade she wears at work. It’s not uncomfortable; Natasha isn’t leering or even disapproving. If anything she looks like a housecat, mildly intrigued but still deciding what to do about it.

“Undercover.” Natasha replies. Romanoff is enigmatic on the best of days, but now Maria gets the feeling she’s just being difficult. Especially with the hint of a grin and that knowing look in her eyes.

Natasha leans forward, her face tone growing serious. “I’m here with Drew,” she says, nodding over to where an out of costume Spider-Woman sits alone at the bar nursing a drink “But this isn’t the right audience for her. Her gifts are best in settings that are more...masculine.”

“What?”

“Pheromones.”

“I see.” She doesn’t really, but she’s fine not knowing anymore than she needs to.

“In any case, since you’re no longer busy, do you feel like working overtime?”

Maria thinks wistfully about the wine and expensive cheese she could be enjoying at home. But as always, duty calls.

“Why not?”

They send Agent Drew home; she’s unsurprised and not the least bit put out, ordering another double on Natasha’s tab before downing it quickly and heading out.

 

…

 

“So” Maria asks. “Do you have a dossier for me? ”

“No, this isn’t S.H.I.E.L.D. It’s personal.”

“For you?”

“For a friend.” She accepts that this is likely all she’s going to get out of Natasha for now.

…

  


Natasha had been tailing a couple, following them here to the Dalloway. They’re together; that much is obvious from the way the blonde placates the other as she makes wild impatient gestures to accompany a tirade inaudible from Maria’s seat in the corner. They’re waiting for someone and Maria expects that this third party is what interests Natasha as well.

A man arrives and sits at their table. He’s tall and striking and looks out of place and not just because the establishment largely caters to lesbians; he looks dangerous. The kind of dangerous that normally cloaks Natasha unless she chooses to conceal it.

Natasha makes a soft sound of approval next to her. “Contact has been made.”

“I’m still waiting for you to tell me why I’m here.” Maria says, hearing the sullen tone of her own voice and not caring. Natasha barely spares her a glance.

“Do you see that couple?”

“The one we’ve been watching for the last half an hour? Yes, I’m familiar. Want to tell me why were interested in a young couple in love.”

“We aren’t. We’re interested in who just sat down at their table.” Natasha says, confirming her suspicion.  She leans closer, angling her body towards Maria, getting a better look at the trio while appearing to simply be flirting with her date. Maria plays along, resting a hand on the bare skin of Natasha’s knee and giving her a coy smile. Natasha leans closer to whisper in her hear

“The two women we’ve been following are victims, idiots but victims.  They badly want to have a child, but like many among the elite, conceited, and stupid they don’t want just _any_ child. They want a perfect child.”

“Genetic engineering?” Maria asks, trying to resist the, involuntary shiver Natasha’s warm breath on her neck sends down her spine.

“They think so. This meeting is to set up an appointment with Veridian Dynamics. They’ll pay absurd amounts of money to ensure their child can run faster, jump higher and outlast any of his peers. And naturally will be a combination of only the best physical attributes of the parents.”

"And the reality?"

“It’s a front. Veridian Dynamics is a front for a lab that’s dabbling in illicit experimentation with Inhuman DNA. They target infertile and lesbian couples that don’t want to deal with having a sperm donor or a surrogate and have more money than common sense. Their child, if it survives a gestational period exposed to unstable Inhuman genetic material, will most likely be reported as stillborn. If it’s lucky that won’t be a lie, otherwise it will live a short painful life as a sample in a lab.”

Maria frowns at the picture Natasha has painted. Forget mutants; forget aliens and forget massively destructive robots. If successful, this scheme and its repercussion could pose a disastrous threat to world security for years if not decades. It's the kind of thing that should be brought to S.H.I.E.L.D. first. But Maria remembers, anger rising within her; Natasha is an Avenger and the Avengers love their secrets.

She takes a deep breath, counts to ten. Natasha senses the change in her attitude even before she pulls away. Maria director of S.H.I.E.L.D. for a reason, she knows which resources to use to get in front of this. She knows how to do her job. If only these people would let her fucking do it.

“Why wasn’t I informed of this?”

“You just were. Now.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. should be –“ she starts.

‘I told _you_ because I trust you. Women and potentially infants are in danger and our actions need to be quick and discreet.  I’m asking for your help, Maria, not your supervision. Any jurisdictional games that compromise our objective will be on your head. Choose wisely.’

  


…

  


Maria calculates several ways this night could have turned out. She could be home watching reruns, still with boring bureaucrat Beth, with another woman from the Dalloway who’d taken a shine to the sad woman sitting alone, on the helicarrier berating rookie agents for being incurably incompetent. The one she doesn’t quite plan on is having the Black Widow’s tongue in her mouth in a dark parking lot at 1 in the morning.

Sometimes hiding in plain sight is a better than lurking in the shadows, especially when you need to surreptitiously plant a GPS tracker on an armored sedan without the hired driver noticing. The driver is more than a driver, Maria can tell by the set of his shoulders. Definitely ex-military, but Natasha would be able to give a more detailed analysis. That is, if she weren’t playing the besotted lover and dragging Maria along with her.

He watches them carefully, suspicious as they wander closer to the vehicle. But under all that training, he’s just a man; all he sees is Natasha pulling her against the side of the car to kiss her. As Maria suspects, he’s highly interested in the way her right hand toys with the hem of Natasha’s skirt. Which is why he ignores her left hand as it slides the tracker into place just under the lip of the wheel well.

She squeezes Natasha waist when she’s done and leans back.

“You’re wearing most of my lipstick.” It’s an inane thing to say, but it’s true.

“And you don’t kiss like I expected you to.” Natasha replies, smoothing Maria’s bangs back over her forehead where they’d been tousled by her fingers. Maria doesn’t want to think about how the rest of her hair must look. She’s also not going to ask _how_ her kiss was surprising; Natasha would probably tell her. Instead, she asks the other obvious question.

“You’ve thought about kissing me?”

Natasha shrugs, linking their fingers together for the benefit of the audience. “Haven’t you thought about kissing _me_?”

 _Fuck._ Maria thinks. _Yes, she has._ And now she knows the Black Widow kisses just as well as she does everything else.

…

 

She hasn’t been a fully-fledged field operative in years. Obviously, she knows her way around a gun and pretty much any weapon system on the helicarrier, but combat is not the same as infiltration. Barking orders on the deck of a ship is not the same as donning a pencil skirt and heels and sitting hand in hand with the Black Widow as she explains her hopes for the child they plan to raise _together_. It’s not the same at all, but it’s not as difficult as Maria would have expected. Natasha is a master at this game, at being exactly what someone expects to see. She flips her hair over her shoulder and smiles winningly at the entrance counselor at Veridian Dynamics. He says they call it VD for short and Maria tells him that is a highly unfortunate acronym. Natasha is pressed against her from shoulder to thigh so that when she laughs, her mirth sends vibrations through Maria’s body. It would be unnerving how well they play off each other, how effortlessly they fall into sync if Maria weren’t awash in a rush of satisfaction and on a more primal level, relief.

This partnership, after all, had not begun in the smoothest of ways.

 

…

  


“We’ll need cover stories, one that you’ll be able to convincingly pull off”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. agents _are_ given standard espionage training you know.”

“Does that mean you’d recommend Coulson or Sitwell to come pose as my husband.”

Maria sighs. God save her from the smartasses of the world. “Fine, you’re the expert; who am I?”

“A federal prosecutor. Ex-JAG. Georgetown Law.”

“Impressive.”

“Yes, well. You do have a commanding presence; no one would believe _you_ were a professor of Russian literature. Besides, it would take longer than we have to break you out of that military posture. And there’s all that tension you carry across your shoulders. It’s believable.”

It’s hard to argue with that logic, but there’s an itch between her shoulders that Maria can’t explain. It’s familiar, from her days as a recruit. She’s feeling competitive when this mission requires cooperation. The last time she worked one-on-one with Natasha, Maria hadn’t been at her best. She’d been on the run, seconds away from a nervous breakdown, and god she’d just slept with Tony Stark. Years and several promotions later, she can’t shake the latent urge to prove herself. She won’t let it get in the way of the mission; she’s more professional than that. But two can play at being insufferably superior.

“If believable is our aim, you might not want to wear the red dress.” She steps up behind Natasha where she’s applying makeup that makes her look younger and completely harmless. Maria’s fingers find the zipper along the side and before she can fully work out what she’s trying to accomplish, she’s tugging it down. Slowly, inch by inch as her knuckles brush against lace then bare skin then lace again until the line of the zipper ends at Natasha’s hip. “I’d recommend something less femme fatale and more…academic.”

Satisfied with the reflection of Natasha’s baleful look through the vanity mirror, Maria leaves the bedroom in their “borrowed” apartment, and focuses on goes trying to find a way to fit her smallest gun into the her clutch.

 

…

  


After that it’s like a game.

Maria’s hand on the small of Natasha’s back, nails scraping through the thin material her of dress, Natasha’s fingers on the nape of her neck toying with hair just barely long enough that it’s beginning to curl over her collar. It’s like some immature game of chicken, but since it can only help their cover, Maria won't be the one to dodge first.

It doesn’t take them long to get inside VD. –really, who approved that abbreviation? -- Wire transferring an obnoxious amount of money to the specified offshore account definitely helped.  Maria will never hear the end of this from accounting. They are informed that their application has been expedited because they are such promising candidates. Maria barely manages to hold in a snort of laughter. They’re basing this all on money and fake credentials from elite boarding schools and universities. It goes to show that even in the criminal underworld, classism is alive and well. Dr. Coulter, their contact and the dangerous looking man from that first night of surveillance, tells them they’ll hear more within the week.

It all seems so easy. Too easy, really. The possibility that they’re walking into a trap bothers her the entire way back.

She’s not wrong.

 

…

  


Natasha presses her against the wall, heedless of the cool brick against the bare skin of her shoulders. Her hand wraps comfortably around the back of Maria’s neck and Maria wonders whether this is becoming a thing. The mouth on hers is warm and much less aggressive than the last time they’d resorted to playing lovers to avoid detection. This time she kisses Maria once, twice and a third time almost teasingly before pulling back to whisper into her ear.

“We’re being watched. The building across the street, 5th floor second window from the left.”

Maria doesn’t look. For one she knows better and for another she trusts the Widow to know what she’s talking about. She plays the woman in love, burying her hands in the sleek fall of Natasha’s hair and kisses her back. One thing she’s picked up from her small experience with undercover work.  If you’ve got an audience, then you’d better give a good show.

But with her mouth open and wet over the skin of Natasha’s throat and Natasha’s strong fingers pressing into the dip of her hips, Maria’s getting a bit fuzzy on how much of this is acting.

“What’s the plan?” she murmurs. “If we go over there and take them out we could interrogate them for information. But our cover would be blown; we’d have to move tonight. Are we ready for that?”

Natasha stills for a moment in the circle of her arms, calculating risks and advantages. Maria can tell the exact moment she decides; her face smoothes out into an impassive mask but her eyes take on that determined glint famous at S.H.I.E.L.D. for sending agents running in the opposite direction.

“We’ll have to be.”

…

  


Maria suspects that the Black Widow is always ready. Together they subdue six heavily armed operatives in under a minute. Well, Natasha subdues four in thirty seconds, but Maria at least kept one of hers conscious to question, so she’s calling it even.

These men are clearly hired guns, because an offer of leniency from S.H.I.E.L.D. has them spilling their guts on everything from the coordinates of a secret laboratory facility (which Maria already has) to the frequency of perimeter security sweeps (which actually turns out to be useful)

…

  


Once she and Natasha get inside the lab, they set out to locate any civilians on the premises. What they find instead are malformed…things that are going to give Maria nightmares for weeks. She’s not sure where they fall on the line between lab experiments and sentient life, but it becomes patently clear they’ll need someone with a science background. When her attempt to download the project data sets off a secondary set of alarms, it also becomes clear they’ll need back up. Fortunately, they’d already called someone to serve as double as both.

As an op, Maria objectively would say it’s a bit messy for her taste. Really, anything that involves the Hulk is messy for her taste. But Hulk makes quick work of the mercenaries while Natasha finishes extracting data and Maria directs a S.H.I.E.L.D. containment team. Within the hour, the lab is secured, the computers are wiped of sensitive data, and Hulk has transformed back into Banner.

“If it’s all right with you, Director Hill, I’d like to analyze this data right away. To see what we’re dealing with.”

“Since when have you ever asked my permission to do anything, Dr. Banner?”

He frowns at her until he realizes she’s joking and Maria thinks they’ve come along way. Not that she doesn’t still enjoy punching him in the jaw from time to time.

“Thanks. I’ll submit my findings to when I’m done.” He leaves with S.H.I.E.L.D. transport, a bit wobbly from post-Hulk exhaustion, leaving her and Natasha supervising the techs as they strip the lab of anything scientifically valuable or potentially dangerous.

“No sign of Coulter?”

“None. According to the geneticist we found hiding in a broom closet on the second floor, he’s never actually been here in person. This entire set up was based on remote instruction and fat paychecks.”

“Tough break.”

“We’ll get to the bottom of this eventually. He’s bound to try again.”

 

…

  
  


They’re back at their fake apartment for the last time, mainly to hose down and clean up before Maria reports to the helicarrier to organize a debriefing and Natasha goes wherever it is she goes when she’s off duty. Maria feels Natasha creep up behind her, the heat of her body is much more noticeable than the sound of bare feet against the carpet. She looks over her shoulder to see that same satisfied cat expression Natasha wore less than a week ago.

Natasha puts a hand on her hip and leans close, “Before you completely transform back into Director Hill, do you want to grab a drink? I know a place.”

That is a bad idea, most fraternization is. But Natasha’s hand is warm on her back and Mrs. Brinowski’s words echo in her ears; _Maria, honey you haven’t had a fun night out in months._

That’s about to change.

 

 


End file.
